Tag Archives: digitization

We have said before: digitization of resources is a lot more work and time and effort than people may realize. So it is inspirational to see smaller libraries working to preserve their history using these neat tools! Sharing resources with their communities is always the mission of all libraries.

“Many people have kept scrapbooks detailing life moments, special occasions and historical events.

Derry Public Library is now on the preservation bandwagon, taking on projects to preserve past memories, town and library history while keeping it safe on digital files for patrons to enjoy.

Library staff members recently discovered several scrapbooks compiled by past librarians and directors, filled with newspaper clippings, photos, letters, and special community programs that describe Derry’s history dating back decades.

Reference librarian Courtney Wason said it’s the library’s goal, as well as the goal of many libraries today, to preserve historical documents and artifacts in digital form and make them available online — making it easier to access the information.

The library’s New Hampshire Room, opened to the public in 1990 when an addition was built onto the original 1927 library building, is one space where much local and state history is already kept very secure in books, binders and on shelves. That includes town and state records, photos, yearbooks, news sources, books, and other periodicals that are often called upon when someone needs to do family research or other historical work.

“It’s a wide breadth of information,” Wason said.

Shelves are full of town and school reports, burial records, American Legion war records, Pinkerton Academy yearbooks, and histories of Derry and surrounding towns. There are also papers and documents on Alan B. Shepard Jr., and poet Robert Frost, and now digital issues of The Eagle-Tribune’s sister publication, the Derry News, dating back to 1891.

The scrapbooks, dating back to the 1920s, will also be put into digital format, according to Wason. Finding the added bits of library history in the classic scrapbooks was a great discovery, showing the effort past library staff took on to preserve history, Wason said.”

Libraries are filled with all kinds of projects, and library people are pretty naturally helpful people. So when there are big, potentially interesting tasks that people could help with, the call goes out. If you want to do a little transcription work, and maybe learn a few basics of digital projects, this is a project you can participate in too!

Chicago’s venerable Newberry Library is asking for the public’s help with what might be the coolest mass transcription project to ever hit our radar. The research library has uploaded to its website a handful of texts that date back at least to the 17th century—including real-life post-medieval manuscripts about magic and witchcraft—that users can help transcribe, translate and edit.

Digitization of old materials, fragile things that we could never touch or see in person, gives all of us access to so many wonderful things! And now Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks, filled with his amazing thoughts and ideas, are available from the British Library!

Click here to get all the good stuff!

“Contents:Notebook of Leonardo da Vinci (‘The Codex Arundel’). A collection of papers written in Italian by Leonardo da Vinci (b. 1452, d. 1519), in his characteristic left-handed mirror-writing (reading from right to left), including diagrams, drawings and brief texts, covering a broad range of topics in science and art, as well as personal notes. The core of the notebook is a collection of materials that Leonardo describes as ‘a collection without order, drawn from many papers, which I have copied here, hoping to arrange them later each in its place according to the subjects of which they treat’ (f. 1r), a collection he began in the house of Piero di Braccio Martelli in Florence, in 1508. To this notebook has subsequently been added a number of other loose papers containing writing and diagrams produced by Leonardo throughout his career. Decoration: Numerous diagrams. “

Recently, they launched their new web-based platform which allows selections of their archival material to be viewed online. Some of this material includes “original letters from Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood painter Dante Gabriel Rossetti to his mistress, photographs of artist and illustrator John Sloan in his studio, and scrapbooks chronicling the Museum’s history.”

Through the Delaware Heritage Collection, The Helen Farr Sloan Library & Archives has digitized for free access some of their most famous collections, including the “John Sloan, Howard Pyle, and Samuel and Mary R. Bancroft, Jr. Pre-Raphaelite Manuscript Collections.”

There are currently 500 archival items available online, with more being added daily and plans for hundreds more to be added this summer. The museum is excited to reach more members of their audience and to be better equipped to handle research and reference requests.

Gary Fisher (1961-1994) was a gay African American man who enjoyed writing and drawing and was a dedicated diarist who died of AIDS at the age of 32 in San Francisco. This page, dated February 7, 1991, is from one of his journals and it illustrates the fear, uncertainty and hope that surrounded the use of new medications to treat HIV and AIDS. (Gary Fisher Papers, San Francisco Public Library)

The team has been asked to digitize about 127,000 pages from 49 archival collections related to the early days of the AIDS epidemic in the San Francisco Bay Area as part of the AIDS History Project, which is being funded by a two-year, $315,000 Implementation Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The project is a joint effort of the Archives and Special Collections department of the UCSF Library, the San Francisco Public Library, and the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender Historical Society.